Fashion 101, Circle Skirt


Today is the first day of my two week vacation from work and school, EEEE! I'm going to Prince Edward Island Monday to visit my folks and some friends.

Last night I decided to cut some hand dyed and hand screen printed fabric I made about a year and a half ago. I've been trying to let go of the attachment I have to fabric I've made... what's the point of having meters and meters of fabric if they just sit there?

Since It usually takes me FOREVER to get through complicated projects when I'm only doing them for myself, I made a Circle Skirt, (Fashion 101)


 
Completed Skirt (sorry about the laundry mound)

 The Pattern




for someone who doesn't know how to make a circle skirt, I'll give you a quick explanation.

1. Decide how long you want your skirt to be. I made mine 22 inches long (inc. seam allowance) but that's because i am 5'2'' and it was to my natural waist.

2. Get your fabric, a piece of string and a pencil. tie the string to your pencil, and make the string the length that you want your skirt. Pin the string to your fabric, and proceed to trace a half circle (ghetto protractor)

3. Figure out how big you want the waistband. I cut mine to 29" (28.5" with seam allowance taken off) because that's my waist size. If you like to wear your skirts at the hip, measure that. I made it four inches thick by 29 inches long rectangle.


 4.Then go online, and find a calculator to tell you the diameter of a circle that is (in my case) 29". At this point I switched to metric just because math with inches is horribly difficult for me.
 

5.The number I got was 22.5" across, so I halved that number, and proceeded to repeat step 2 in the middle of the half circle you already have (put the pin back where it was before. At this point you should have something resembling half of a doughnut on your fabric.
 

6. Cut out your half doughnut and trace it onto another piece of fabric. You should now have two pieces the exact same, when placed beside each other make a doughnut shape. CONGRATS!


7. sew two pieces together so that your two half circles are one step closer to being one big circle (sew two side seams together) with the good sides facing in
 

8. with the good sides facing down, iron down 1/4 inch seams on each side of the waistband (rectangle) you cut out. fold it in half (good side will now be facing out) and iron it in half. sew this along where you cut out the small half circle in the skirt.

9. Sew a zipper into the remaining side seam and finish the seam off. Hem the bottom. (zippers are hard as shit, feel free to replace a zipper with a line of buttons)



VOILA! circle skirt

Little Bags

In an effort to be more productive, I am trying to not go online or watch TV all night after work when my boyfriend is at work. So tonight, I made some dye samples and pieces of fabric into little clutches with wrist straps. They're lined as well! Here they areeeee (all of the photos were facing the same direction and then they all flipped around when they were uploaded. Sorry team).

They're all about 5.5x8.5" and if anyone wants one, they're 15 smackaroos (and if you want to look through the heaps of dye samples in my apartment, I'll totally make you one out of whatever one you want)








Update


Life has been hectic since school ended! Here is what I've been up to!


I was doing a condensed seven week independent study. The study itself was based on my dreams. I recorded my dreams for several weeks leading up to the study, and I chose one to base my work off of. In the dream, I gave birth to several large spider robots, that were about the size of a small dog. I threw them into a large aquarium of water, and as they sunk they transformed into these soulless babies who's eyes flashed red. 

I ultimately started out wanting to make one piece, but ended up planning a line of three, and would only make one for my study.

 

My Mood board for my line is pretty sparse. Since most of my inspiration was internal, it seemed silly to put all of these pictures for inspiration that didn't make sense for my concept. The right most design has been scrapped altogether, and the middle is the piece I made for my class.

I planned to weave my silk to make the dress, and below shows the silk I wove..... and the weave was too lose so I couldn't cut into it. I plan on making the leftmost dress above by wrapping the fabric around the model and leaving the meterage intact. The right most dress will be made entirely of wire, AND the dress I made was out of translucent silk, with large wire spider accessories to wrap around the body (the top thing is a small model of one of these).


All in all, This project turned out okay. A LOT of the things went wrong. the spiders aren't as sturdy as i'd have liked, so i plan to reinforce the legs with thicker grade wire and spray paint them. The dress itself wasn't to my prof's liking in terms of craftsmenship, which I was frustrated with because I feel I am not experienced enough working with difficult fabrics to make what I want yet, and I don't always know the best way to make something I suppose.

I haven't posted photos of the dress because I plan on putting them into the wearable art show this winter and don't want to ruin the surprise.


 I have been taking photos of flowers lately, I find they give me interesting ideas for color combinations I never would have thought of on my own. These are some from my walk home from work!





AND my last but not least summer project is a comission piece for two women in the city i live in, to make two of the three Sampson sister's costumes for them from the movie hocus pocus. The two on the far left and right are the ones I am making. I found close ups of the dresses themselves.




I have two weeks of vacation coming up and I'll be visiting my family in PEI, 

Knitting Knitting Knitting!

Hello!

Long time no post!
I have been doing a condensed seven week independent study and working full time, whew! I'm not quite ready to show the work from my study, but I have a project that I never put up from the winter semester.

These are hand knit sweaters. I dyed the roving with natural dye, spun the wool and knit them into sweaters. They are abstract interpretations of memories I've had.

Ice Storm in Rural Area






 Rainy Night in the City
R